Facebook is boosting its efforts to put more news in its
News Feed. That is, real news from the news media, rather than status
updates from friends.
The world's biggest
social network, cognizant of its growing importance for discovering
news, said in a blog post on Monday that it is revising the way it
delivers information to its billion-plus users.
"People
use Facebook to share and connect, including staying current on the
latest news, whether it's about their favorite celebrity or what's
happening in the world," said the blog post from Facebook engineering
manager Varun Kacholia and software engineer Minwen Ji.
"We've
noticed that people enjoy seeing articles on Facebook, and so we're now
paying closer attention to what makes for high quality content, and how
often articles are clicked on from News Feed on mobile. What this means
is that you may start to notice links to articles a little more often
(particularly on mobile)."
The blog noted that
"our surveys show that on average people prefer links to high quality
articles about current events, their favorite sports team or shared
interests, to the latest meme."
And Facebook
will tweak the way its displays articles in user News Feeds: "This means
that high quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more
prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less
prominently," the engineers wrote.
They added that Facebook will also "show people additional articles similar to ones they had just read."
"Soon,
after you click on a link to an article, you may see up to three
related articles directly below the News Feed post to help you discover
more content you may find interesting," they said.
But
to avoid diminishing the updates from friends, Facebook will revise its
"bumping," which means that after a user reads an article it may not
show up again in the News Feed unless there are new comments from
friends.
A study earlier this year showed
Facebook is becoming a key source of news for users of the huge social
network, even if people discover articles mostly by happenstance.
The
study by the Pew Research Center, in collaboration with the Knight
Foundation, found 64 per cent of US adults use Facebook, and nearly half
of those get some news from the service. That amounts to 30 per cent of
the overall US population who are "Facebook news consumers," Pew said.
Facebook
reported in October that referral traffic from the social network to
media sites has increased by over 170 per cent over the past year.
0 comments:
Post a Comment